Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/756621
30 environmental controls were displayed on touch- screens. Due to the way the set was constructed, many of these tablets were inaccessible once mounted in place. This meant that once the content was loaded, we had to have a way to make modifications through the device itself in case changes were needed. The beauty of using a game engine is that it renders graphics in real time. Whenever color, text, sizing, positioning or speed needed to be changed, it could be done live and interactively without causing the kind of delays in the shooting schedule that would have resulted if we'd had to rip devices out of the walls. This flexibility was so attractive to both the production designer and director that tablets began popping up everywhere! When we got to the cafeteria set, we were presented with the challenge of having a tablet floating on glass in front of a Sony 4K TV that needed to be triggered remotely as well as respond to the actor's touch. As the storyline goes, Chris Pratt's character becomes frustrated while dealing with an interactive food- dispensing machine and starts to pound buttons on the tablet. We needed that to be reflected in the cor- responding graphics on the larger screen as they were part of the same machine. Traditionally, this would involve remotely puppeteering the second screen to match choreographed button presses. With the pace at which he was pressing buttons, it made more sense to leverage the networking capabilities of Unity's engine to allow the tablet to control what's seen on the TV. This eliminated the need for any choreography and allowed for Chris to be much more immersed in his character's predicament as well as eliminated any takes having to be interrupted by out-of-sync actions. Top: Screen shot of Unity development software of a hibernation bay pod screen. Opposite page, above: Screen shot of the tablet start screen where we could select from a database of cleared passenger names, jobs, ID numbers, etc. Left: Photo of tablets in the hibernation bay pod set.